Home › Desserts › Apricot Tapioca
Apricot Tapioca
Soak 1 cupful of fine tapioca for two hours in sufficient cold water to cover. Drain, put into a double boiler with ¼ of a cupful of sugar and the syrup drained from I can of apricots, adding boiling water sufficient to give 3 cupfuls of liquid. Add ½ of a teaspoonful of salt and cook until transparent. Cut each piece of apricot into three and put in layers in a pudding dish with the cooked tapioca. Bake for half an hour in a moderate oven and serve with cream.
A frugal steamed-then-baked pudding built around a can of apricots and its syrup. Two of the numbers come through the old typesetting garbled, so read them as fractions.
- The saltThe printed page was checked, and the tapioca, sugar and liquid quantities are as given here. The half teaspoon of salt is generous for a dessert; a quarter teaspoon is enough if the apricot syrup is already sweet.
- Fine tapiocaThis means small pearl or granulated tapioca, not modern instant (minute) tapioca, which is pre-gelatinised and needs no soaking. Instant tapioca cooked this way turns to paste. Small pearl tapioca is sold in Asian and Latin groceries.
- Liquid arithmeticA can of apricots yields roughly a cupful or so of syrup; top up with boiling water to reach the 3 cupfuls the recipe calls for. Three cupfuls of liquid to one of tapioca gives a pudding thick enough to hold its shape on the spoon rather than run.
- Cook until transparentThis is the hinge. In a double boiler the pearls take 20 to 30 minutes and are done when no white opaque centre remains in any grain. Chalky centres will not soften in the oven, and the pudding will be gritty.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; "moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F. Half an hour is enough to set the top and heat through; the dish is already cooked when it goes in.
- LayeringStart and finish with tapioca so the fruit does not dry or scorch on the surface. Apricot halves cut in three give pieces that hold their shape.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly six servings in a dish of about 1 1/2 quarts. "Cream" here means plain unwhipped heavy or light cream poured over; serve warm or at room temperature, as it firms considerably once chilled.
Tapioca is starch extracted from the cassava root, shipped to Europe and North America from Brazil and Southeast Asia and sold in pearls or granules; by the late nineteenth century it was among the cheaper thickeners a household could buy, and puddings made from it filled the dessert chapters of economy cookbooks alongside cornstarch blancmange and bread pudding. The particular appeal of this version is that nothing is wasted: the syrup from the can does the work of both sugar and flavouring, so a single tin of fruit is stretched across a whole dish. Canned apricots became a common pantry item once commercial canning brought California fruit within reach of ordinary budgets, and recipes of this kind exist largely to make one tin go further.